Plant Genome III Conference Plant Genome III Conference
The World Wide Web has become a valuable tool for providing access to genome-related data. In addition to the data made available through the Plant Genome Information System, there are many other data sources that are accessible via the . These include: other genome databases (e.g. ACEDB (C. elegans), MycDB (mycoplasma), GDB and IGD (human)), sequence databases (e.g. SwissProt, Genbank, PIR, dbEST), bibliographic databases (e.g. AGRICOLA and Medline), germplasm databases (Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre and GRIN) and other related databases (e.g. Enzyme, Rebase, and Prosite). The strength of the lies in the ease with which hypertext links can be forged between data sources without knowing the underlying software being used to serve up the data. These links allow the user to move transparently between genome data, sequence data and bibliographic data with single mouse clicks. They also open the possibility of more complex queries, such as those needed for comparative analysis, which have resisted implementation due to the extensive programming required. Some mechanisms used for linking together multiple data sources via the WWW, will be discussed with examples drawn from the Plant Genome Database Project.